Our impact

YFM backs small UK businesses to help them to grow and produce strong financial returns for our investors. But we also want to build better businesses that are ultimately more sustainable. As part of our aim of building bigger and better businesses, we identify impact and ESG areas where our businesses can target improvement.

Paul Cannings

Partner

You can read more about our approach in our latest Sustainability Investment Report and Sustainability Investment Policy

Download here

As signatories of the PRI, we follow the Principles for Responsible Investment.

Our process

We believe that good businesses...

Grow our Economy

£12m

was invested in research and development by our companies

£34m

of goods were exported by our portfolio businesses, up from £29m in 2019

2,954

full time jobs were created/maintained by our portfolio businesses, up from 2,805 in 2019

Improve our Society

17%

of our portfolio businesses had a female CEO, versus 8% of the FTSE100

207

volunteering days were completed by our portfolio businesses, up from 58 days in 2019

30%

screened their suppliers
for both human rights and wider
ethics standards

Value our People

50%

Of our portfolio businesses had a mental wellbeing programme for their employees, up from 45% in 2019

20,000

hours of non-statutory training was given by our companies

95%

of our portfolio businesses paid all of their staff more than the minimum wage, up from 90% in 2019

Protect our Environment

45%

of our portfolio businesses had carbon reduction strategies in place, up from 40% in 2019

55%

of our portfolio businesses had a plastic reduction strategy in place, up from 50% in 2019

75%

of our portfolio businesses had a landfill diversion strategy in place, up from 65% in 2019

The above content references 2020 data

Impact Case Study

Displayplan

Displayplan is clear about what it strives to achieve with its sustainability policy:

“Our goal to achieve net zero carbon sustainability can only be realised with commitment from initial design thinking through the whole supply chain.”

Read the case study

Impact Case Study

FourNet

FourNet decided to address employee engagement in a number of ways but most significantly set itself the target of winning a place in the Best Companies to work for survey within 2 years.

Read the case study

Impact Case Study

CPMS

CPMS is a provider of consulting and infrastructure solutions to the rail industry. They wanted to bring a fresh approach to the industry and to recruit and retain an enthusiastic team with good age and gender balance.

They recognised that “our employees’ talent is key to our culture, our brand identity and our reputation”.

Read the case study

Play our video

Charities we support

Each month, we’ll be making a £1,000 donation to a charity nominated by one of the YFM team.

Read the story

Charities we support

Each month, we’ll be making a £1,000 donation to a charity nominated by one of the YFM team.

Impact
news

Read the latest news stories on impact at YFM and across our investment portfolio.

YFM team scales Snowdon for charity

31 October 2022

YFM joins Investing in Women Code committed to supporting women entrepreneurs

28 October 2022

Back to top